The Ejection Site

Project 90, A study in 0-0 Ejection

"I've been kicked in the ass harder than that..."-- Jim Hall

Zero-Zero - just about the lowest point in the Ejection Envelope.
Sitting on the ground, with the aircraft immobile.An emergency arises and you don't have time to
hop out of the cockpit and run. What can you do? How do you know the seat will work? Will it
launch you high enough for the parachute to open? Will you be injured by the force of the launch?

These questions led to a unique test. In the mid-1960s a firm that had made its name providing
ejection seats and egress technology to both the military and to NASA decided that instrumented
dummies did not provide all the information needed. They felt that certain questions of human
physiology needed to be answered by a test of a live human. Weber Aircraft's seats had saved
over 500 lives by this time. They had been fitted to such varied craft as the F-106 and the
Gemini Space capsule. The F-106 seat included the latest technologies available to allow for a
clean ejection, including a gun deployed parachute, rocket motor, and self deploying survival
equipment.

In late 1965, Jim Hall a professional parachute safety instructor and Major in
the Air Force Reserve volunteered to act as the human guinea pig for the 0-0 seat package. He
was instructed in all facets of the seat operation. He viewed films of the 43 sequential
successful tests of the F-106 0-0 system. He also was measured for center of gravity in order to
align the rocket exhaust with the center of mass of the man-seat package. In the tradition of the
day, he visited the assembly line and selected the particular seat he would later ride.

The engineers checked and verified all functions of the particular seat. They selected a lake not
far from the factory for the test. A set of seat rails were attached to a test stand. The date and
time were selected. And then it was time.

Jim Hall, accompanied by a platoon of engineers,
arrived at the site and was shown the seat. Now it was mounted on the rails, wired and ready
to fire. Every mechanical function had been checked and double checked. Major Hall was attired
in an orange flight suit. Its arms were cut away at the shoulder to reveal a small area of skin
that had been marked by pigment. He was strapped into his chute and assisted into the seat. All
the straps were connected and tightened. The engineering cameras were armed to record every aspect
of the test, even the slump of Jim's shoulder markings under launch acceleration. Then the engineers
withdrew to a safe distance. The rescue launches on the lake were signaled, and the countdown
began...

Major Hall gripped the handles built into the sides of the seat bucket and pulled
them up to the firing position... and nothing happened... for one long second. The
delay cartridge allowed the high speed cameras to get to speed and then the hot gas was unleashed
into the catapult initiator. The Major rose up the rails with anonset rate of 150 g's/second with
a maximum of about 14g's. The rocket ignited as the seat cleared the rail providing the huge jet of
flame in the above picture. One second and almost 400 feet later, seat separation occurred. The
parachute gun fired, and two seconds later the parachute was fully inflated. The survival kit
automatically released and dropped to the end of its lanyard. The rubber raft, suspended from
the same lanyard,immediately inflated.

Approximately 26 seconds after Major Hall pulled the
handles he landed in the lake.A journey of only a few dozen yards had taken him to an altitude
of about 400 feet andinto the history books (albeit only a few obscure ones...). To this day,
thirty-three years later, Jim Hall's zero-zero ejection test remains the only 0-0 test that was
executedwith a human subject in the United States by an American Company. (The first known live
0-0 test was executed in 1961 by Martin-Baker Aircraft Co. Inc.. Doddy Hay, a M-B employee,
was the 'Man in the Hot Seat' for that first test. There have been several other live tests,
most of which have been at altitude, or with some airspeed.)

Special thanks to Gordon Cress (Project Test Engineer: Project 90)
for providing the information and the photograph for this page.